How can you create a more human brand voice and tone with personas?

If you want to connect with your audience and build trust, you need to communicate with a consistent and authentic brand voice and tone. But how do you define and apply your brand voice and tone across different channels and contexts? One way is to use personas, which are fictional representations of your ideal customers, based on real data and insights. In this article, you'll learn how to create and use personas to craft a more human brand voice and tone that resonates with your audience.

1 What are personas and why do they matter?

Personas are tools that help you understand your audience's needs, goals, pain points, preferences, and behaviors. They help you segment your audience into different groups and tailor your content and messages to each group. By creating personas, you can also develop a more human brand voice and tone that reflects your audience's personality, values, and emotions. A human brand voice and tone can help you stand out from the competition, engage your audience, and increase loyalty.

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Jason Patterson

Founder of Jewel Content Marketing Agency | Truths & Memes | Content Strategy, Thought Leadership, Copywriting, Social Media 'n' Stuff for B2B & Tech
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It can be hard to sound human as a brand if you have no idea who you're talking to, because talking in a vacuum is not a human activity. This is where personas come in. They provide that other person to converse with, making it easier to sound conversational.

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2 How to create personas for your brand voice and tone?

To create personas for your brand voice and tone, you need to do some research and analysis. Utilizing surveys, interviews, analytics, social media, reviews, and feedback can provide you with data about your audience. After collecting the information, you can use tools like templates, charts, or software to organize and visualize it. Aim to create 3-5 personas that represent your main audience segments. Each persona should be given a name, a photo, a brief background, and some key characteristics such as demographics (age, gender, location, education, income), psychographics (interests, hobbies, values, beliefs, motivations), challenges (problems, frustrations, fears, obstacles), goals (desires, aspirations, needs), behaviors (online habits, media consumption), and voice and tone (words/phrases/tone/style/emotions that appeal to them).

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Hazel Quimpo

🎯 I help small teams get their marketing shit together. AI, Automations and Badass Systems and Strategy for Marketing
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First, throw out any vague notions of what you think your customers are like. What I've learned is that your gut feel isn't enough. You need data. Where do they hang out online? What are their pain points? What do they rant about on Twitter or praise in online forums? This is the raw material for building a persona that's not just a cardboard cutout, but a living, breathing representation of your audience. Know their hangouts, their talks, their gripes. That's your persona's DNA right there.

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3 How to use personas to guide your brand voice and tone?

Once you have your personas, you can use them to guide your brand voice and tone across different channels and contexts. To apply your personas to content marketing, first identify the persona(s) you want to target with each piece of content. Take into account the purpose, format, and channel of your content, and select the persona(s) that match your goals and audience. Then, define voice and tone attributes that suit each persona. Utilize the voice and tone characteristics you identified for each persona as a reference. Think about how you want to sound to each persona, what words, phrases, tone, style, and emotions you want to use. Create a voice and tone chart or matrix to summarize and compare your voice and tone attributes for each persona. When writing and editing your content, make sure it reflects your brand voice and tone for each persona. Ensure it is consistent, clear, and engaging. You can also use tools like readability scores, sentiment analysis, or feedback to evaluate and improve your content.

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4 How to test and refine your brand voice and tone with personas?

Creating and using personas to craft your brand voice and tone is not a one-time process. You need to test and refine your brand voice and tone regularly as your audience and your brand evolve. To do this, you should monitor and measure your content performance with metrics like traffic, engagement, conversions, retention, and satisfaction. Collecting feedback from your audience through surveys, polls, reviews, comments, or interviews is also important. Additionally, you may need to update and revise your personas to reflect changing needs, goals, challenges, behaviors, and voice and tone preferences. All of this can help you optimize your content and make adjustments as needed.

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5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How can you create a more human brand voice and tone with personas?

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1 What are personas and why do they matter?

2 How to create personas for your brand voice and tone?

3 How to use personas to guide your brand voice and tone?

4 How to test and refine your brand voice and tone with personas?

5 Here’s what else to consider

Content Marketing

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How can you create a more human brand voice and tone with personas?

1

2

3

4

5

1 What are personas and why do they matter?

2 How to create personas for your brand voice and tone?

3 How to use personas to guide your brand voice and tone?

4 How to test and refine your brand voice and tone with personas?

5 Here’s what else to consider

Content Marketing

Rate this article

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